The Long Room

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After an inconsequential Oxford degree, Stephen Donaldson secures a job at the intelligence service. Far from the glamour he had envisaged, Stephen spends his days listening to recorded conversations between elderly communists. This is the early eighties. The Cold War is going cold and the threat of the IRA hangs over a nation pinned to their sofas by weekly instalments of Brideshead Revisited.When Stephen is asked to take on an urgent new case, it appears to be his chance for promotion. Yet as he starts to listen to the potential mole, he hears the voice of Helen - the suspect's wife - and falls instantly under her spell. He embarks on a dangerous fantasy that not only threatens his own happiness but has consequences of international significance.As beautiful as it is intense, The Long Room is the dazzling new novel from a critically acclaimed writer. With her mastery of the perfect detail, Francesca Kay explores the mind under pressure, the limits of love, and the suffocating nature of class and convention.